South Africa will start production of a COVID-19 vaccine in the third quarter of this
year, and the first clinical trial is set to start in November. This is the news from the
Biovac Institute and its partners, which said they would immediately commence
technical transfer activities, that includes on-site development and equipment
installation activities.
Biovac CEO Dr Morena Makhoana said the company would obtain drug substances
from facilities in Europe, and manufacturing of finished doses will commence in
- At full operational capacity, the annual Covid-19 vaccine production will
exceed 100 million finished doses annually. All doses will exclusively be distributed
within the 55 member states that make up the African Union.
“We are thrilled to collaborate with Pfizer and BioNTech to produce and distribute
the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 Vaccine within Africa. This is a testament of the
long-standing relationship we have had with Pfizer through the Pneumo-conjugate
vaccine” said Makhoana.
Managing Director at Afrigen Biologics and Vaccines, professor Petro Terblanche said
the objective is to produce the first-ever end-to-end Covid-19 vaccine constructed
from the same sequence as the Moderna vaccine 1273 in Africa and low, and low
middle-income countries (LMIC). This technology will then be transferred to
multiple spokes based in LMICs as part of a sustainable manufacturing capacity
creation and supply of vaccines.
“The Hub and our core partner, Wits University, have made at lab scale the drug
substance and formulated using selected lipid nanoparticles.
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We are still busy with analytics to complete the process and to enable us to confirm
the qualities and composition. We will make multiple batches before starting the
scale-up and GMP production. The target date for Phase 1 clinical trial to start is Nov
2022,” she said.
Chairperson and Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said: “From day one, our goal has been to
provide fair and equitable access of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 Vaccine to
everyone, everywhere. Our latest collaboration with Biovac is a shining example of
the tireless work being done, in this instance, to benefit Africa. We will continue to
explore and pursue opportunities to bring new partners into our supply chain
network, including in Latin America, to further accelerate the access of Covid-19
vaccines.”
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